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RFC: A Preview Of The Phoronix Graphs With Iveland

Phoronix: RFC: A Preview Of The Phoronix Graphs With Iveland

Earlier this week I shared part of the vision that Matthew Tippett and I have for OpenBenchmarking.org (the next-generation version of Phoronix Global) and how it will change Linux benchmarking when launched with Phoronix Test Suite 3.0. One of the features of OpenBenchmarking.org / Phoronix Test Suite 3.0 "Iveland" is a major overhaul to the result graphs. Here's a preview of what's to come and we welcome your feedback...

Very nice. The horizontal bar graphs were always one of the most awkward parts of the initial PTS implementations.

I didn't worry about the graphs because getting the foundation in place was the biggest and most important task and graphs could always be changed later, but it's great to see the whole suite maturing to the point where you can start to put time on polishing the output.

The new graphs are a great improvement and allow more information to be usefully presented. I'm sure the next request will be to somehow show the standard error information graphically (some kind of stacked bar graph I guess) but IMO getting this level of improvement out is more important.

Just ported the line graph object to Iveland's pts_Graph. Though I need to make some more modifications to pts_LineGraph for the error bars to appear. Any design comments are welcome though.

Edit: The line graphs with Iveland will also have a lot of cool interactivity to them too.

I think each point in the line graph should be rendered, rather than just 1 at the very beginning and end.

It's amazing how much better those horizontal graphs look compared to the existing vertical ones. Congrats!

Since the plan is to render all the graphs dynamically, I suggest making them relatively simple by default (much like the current screenshots) and then you stick error bars, etc. on top if someone clicks a button. That leaves them clean for people who just want a click glance at them, while letting people dig into the details if they want to get more information.

I think each point in the line graph should be rendered, rather than just 1 at the very beginning and end.

Traditionally in pts_Graph, each point is rendered if there is less than six points or so to render... Once the interactivity comes, I may increase that limit to like 50 or so points (of course if you go to a place like kernel-tracker.phoromatic.com and increase it to like 180 days, you don't want all those points), but with adding more points will increase the target size for roll-over interactivity.

It's amazing how much better those horizontal graphs look compared to the existing vertical ones. Congrats!

Thanks!

Since the plan is to render all the graphs dynamically, I suggest making them relatively simple by default (much like the current screenshots) and then you stick error bars, etc. on top if someone clicks a button. That leaves them clean for people who just want a click glance at them, while letting people dig into the details if they want to get more information.

Yep, they will be very simple by default when the interactivity comes... You'll mouse-over for error bars, etc.

One of the problems I've noticed with the existing line graphs is that they become very difficult to read once more than 2 lines are present. I'm not sure exactly what the problem is, but maybe the lines just need to be thicker and colors more different? Manually choosing colors might make sense as well, so that you can pick related colors for similar lines. Example: Choosing Orange=Ubuntu, Red=Fedora, and then Green for a BSD, Blue for Windows, Purple for an older Windows, etc.

The horizontal graphs are a great improvement, thanks a lot!
Another thing that would be very good is to be able to have one of the measurements as a reference, and then display the relative difference to that ref for the other measurements.

One of the problems I've noticed with the existing line graphs is that they become very difficult to read once more than 2 lines are present. I'm not sure exactly what the problem is, but maybe the lines just need to be thicker and colors more different? Manually choosing colors might make sense as well, so that you can pick related colors for similar lines. Example: Choosing Orange=Ubuntu, Red=Fedora, and then Green for a BSD, Blue for Windows, Purple for an older Windows, etc.

You can manually configure the colors via the graph-config.xml file, but seeing as I like to make everything as automated as possible, I could add the logic to try to detect common test strings and to pick appropriate colors based upon ATI v. NVIDIA, Red Hat vs. Ubuntu, etc